Well-were it not a pleasant thing To fall asleep with all one's friends; To pass with all our social ties To silence from the paths of men ; And every hundred years to rise And learn the world, and sleep again; To sleep thro' terms of mighty wars, And wake on science grown to more, On secrets of the brain, the stars, As wild as aught of fairy lore; The Federations and the Powers; In divers seasons, divers climes ; For we are Ancients of the earth, And in the morning of the times. II. So sleeping, so aroused from sleep Thro' sunny decads new and strange, Or gay quinquenniads would we reap The flower and quintessence of change. III. Ah, yet would I — and would I might ! To choose your own you did not care; You'd have my moral from the song, And I will take my pleasure there : And, am I right or am I wrong, My fancy, ranging thro' and thro', To search a meaning for the song, Perforce will still revert to you; Nor finds a closer truth than this All-graceful head, so richly curl'd, And evermore a costly kiss The prelude to some brighter world. IV. In carol, every bud to flower, What eyes, like thine, have waken'd hopes? What lips, like thine, so sweetly join'd? Where on the double rosebud droops The fulness of the pensive mind; Which all too dearly self-involved, Yet sleeps a dreamless sleep to me; A sleep by kisses undissolved, That lets thee neither hear nor see: And briony-vine and ivy-wreath Ran forward to his rhyming, And from the valleys underneath Came little copses climbing. The linden broke her ranks and rent Came wet-shot alder from the wave, Came yews, a dismal coterie ; Each pluck'd his one foot from the grave, Poussetting with a sloe-tree: Old elms came breaking from the vine, The vine stream'd out to follow, And, sweating rosin, plump'd the pine From many a cloudy hollow. And was n't it a sight to see, When, ere his song was ended, Like some great landslip, tree by tree, The country-side descended; And shepherds from the mountain-eaves Look'd down, half-pleased, halffrighten'd, As dash'd about the drunken leaves The random sunshine lighten'd! O, nature first was fresh to men, You moved her at your pleasure. Twang out, my fiddle! shake the twigs! And make her dance attendance; Blow, flute, and stir the stiff-set sprigs, And scirrhous roots and tendons. "T is vain! in such a brassy age I could not move a thistle; The very sparrows in the hedge Scarce answer to my whistle; Or at the most, when three-parts-sick With strumming and with scraping, A jackass heehaws from the rick, The passive oxen gaping. But what is that I hear? a sound Like sleepy counsel pleading; O Lord! 't is in my neighbor's ground, And Works on Gardening thro' there, And Methods of transplanting trees, By squares of tropic summer shut But these, tho' fed with careful dirt, The spindlings look unhappy. That blows upon its mountain, The vilest herb that runs to seed Beside its native fountain. And I must work thro' months of toil, To grow my own plantation. ST. AGNES' EVE. DEEP on the convent-roof the snows Slant down the snowy sward, As these white robes are soil'd and dark, As this pale taper's earthly spark, So shows my soul before the Lamb, Break up the heavens, O Lord! and far, |